Lots Of Major Bitcoin Exchanges Are Under A 'Concerted And Massive Attack' Right Now

Andreas Antonopolous is chief security officer at
Blockchain.info, a popular Bitcoin wallet service, and
he tells CoinDesk that numerous Bitcoin exchanges are
experiencing a "massive and concerted" denial of service attack
right now.

This is a type of attack on one's digital real estate in which
nefarious hackers bombard servers with junk requests over and
over until they become useless. It's akin to filling a glass of
water until it overflows.

In Antonopolous' words: "As [Bitcoin] transactions are being
created, malformed/parallel transactions are also being created
so as to create a fog of confusion over the entire network, which
then affects almost every single implementation out there."

In other (simpler) words: this attack may cause Bitcoin to behave
weirdly.

He added that no money has actually been lost, as exchanges halt
withdrawals as needed in order to keep everything synchronized.
One exchange affected by the attack, Bitstamp, sent an email to
its customers to that effect.

Antonopolous predicts things will be operating normally in
between one and three days.